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Published 09:38 5 Jun 2017 BST
"A home-grown Jihadi in an Arsenal shirt brought terror and murder to the streets of London," it reads.The piece is about this man being radicalised in the UK. The Arsenal shirt? That's just a beautiful coincidence in a twisted way of thinking. You see, it actually has nothing to do with the story - but, by Jesus, it fuels it. Arsenal fans are some of the most passionate in England. Football fans are everyday folk like me and you. Nowhere is safe, nobody is to be trusted - that's basically all you can take from a story that leads with what is an inconsequential detail. It says he's a former Underground and KFC worker but those headlines don't spread like an Arsenal jersey does. He might've been a fan of House of Cards for all we know but how could you not use the fever and frenzy and evocative and scary thought of thousands of people sitting together every week in football? It was a deliberate tactic because the truth is whatever TV shows these "home-grown" terrorists might've binge-watched on a Monday night is just as relevant to what shirt one of them was wearing on a Saturday night. What's the purpose of it? Is it up to the good Gooners to root the bad apples out of their supporters' clubs? Is it up to everyone else to now live in distrust of anyone? Was this man Wenger In or Wenger Out? Who gives a fuck? It's not relevant, it's not even close to mattering. But, yet again, another football club and its fans have been dragged into a headline when people have died and they've had nothing to do with it.
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